For most of 16 weeks McCandless more than held his own. Indeed, were it not for one or two

innocent and seemingly insignificant blunders he would have walked out of the Alaskan woods in July or August as anonymously as he walked into them in April.

Yeah, Krakauer is an idiot for saying that. His blunder was not walking out after four or eight weeks.

My take isn't that Krakauer wanted to make McCandless an accomplished outdoorsman but that he wanted to make him out to be the type of person who would find a solution to overcome whatever came his way with the suggestion that we all should try to do the same. Then the "fates conspired against" stuff I agree.

I've never known anyone quite like McCandless. The closest I can think of is a high school friend who once told us, "I have a great idea to make a lot of money, all we need is a dead body." He was the type who did ok at stuff but never really went anywhere. He didn't necessarily blame the world, but the impression was his break was just around the corner.

One more complaint I should have said originally: for all his desired independence, McCandless still relied on the bus for his shelter, a bus other people had hauled out there.